12:26 am - Why Yes, I Am Going to the Toga PartyI miss the Fishers. Six Feet Under is one of those shows that I hesitated to characterize my feelings for as anything more than "really like" because it wasn't like I felt a deep love for it all along, even though I was addicted to it. But a day later, having read some praise and analyses of the show's strengths, I can bite the bullet and admit my love.

Chuck

Similarly, I think I crossed the line from like to love with Chuck tonight. That was a great episode that proved that this show actually has a game plan, that they have more than one idea, that they're willing to explore interesting questions and issues that arise from the premise. I daresay I may actually love Chuck more than Pushing Daisies at this point. It's just easier to love. It's simple, funny, and solid, with fewer hurdles to overcome. Most people who love Pushing Daisies madly seem to do so irrationally, and I just haven't really felt it; something is keeping me from moving past the "really like" stage for now.

The premise for the episode is awesome, and Zachary Levi can really bring the Serious when he needs to, like at the end of the teaser. Until he actually said the words, "Why am I in the INTERSECT?" I didn't totally get the significance of his having flashed on his ID card. But his delivery totally made me sit up and take note of how fucked-up and surprising that was.

Veronica Mars shout-out! And, suddenly, I hate Morgan a little less. Come to think of it, I didn't really hate Morgan at all in this episode. I may have even...liked him a little. The Buy More antics were fun. C.S. Lee is clearly having a lot of fun with the role.

The flashbacks with Matthew Bomer made me feel like I was watching Traveler again. Heh.

I loved the "Are you going to the toga party?" code (as you can tell from my post title), and the payoff was awesome. I don't care how silly it was, I loved seeing random college students show up with guns ("Aren't you in my econ class?"). And then Chuck gets saved by a hot chick with a dropkick.

And I'm glad that Bryce wasn't eeeeevil and had good intentions in getting Chuck kicked out. Hurt him to save him! (But...didn't he also steal his girlfriend? That wasn't CIA-related, was it? WAS IT?!)

Finally, with "Leave the quips to me," I think I have to view Casey as a total joke of a character who's not actually meant to be taken seriously.

Wait, not finally yet. Because OMG ZORK. YOU ARE LIKELY TO BE EATEN BY A GRUE. Yaaaaaaaaaay. Who's the authentic geek on staff, because any dimwit can make Lord of the Rings references, but it takes a true geek to reference Zork not once but twice.

Well, since we're on "bad," let's get some of that out of the way. Everything with Claire and West sucks as usual. West is apparently not a Company plant as many suspected, which makes him even more of a waste of a space and an obnoxious character. Claire seems to have completely fucking forgotten everything her dad did for her last season.

The Japan stuff continued to feel incredibly boring and pointless, though drugging Hiro to keep his power in check was a neat trick. And the Hiro/Kensei fight was very reminiscent of the Obi-Wan/Anakin fight at the end of Return of the Sith. And then, with the tearful goodbyes to Yaeko where we find out that blah-di-blah, Hiro was basically his own hero, cute, I thought, "Seriously? That was the point of this whole storyline? This is why they stuck Hiro in Japan for seven episodes? It's a cute idea they could have gotten across as a throwaway. This whole endeavor was such a waste of time oh my God." And then Hiro conveniently reappears now instead of the timepoint he last knew, which would make the most sense. Oh, time travel nonsense.

But there was some good time travel nonsense! Like Peter and Caitlin in 12 Monkeys Land, the magical world of 2008. So far in the future! Because the virus hit in...late March, 2007? Ah, I had to remind myself, New York was supposed to explode in November of last year, and only four months have passed since then, so...if my calculations are correct, humanity is due to be wiped out in a couple weeks, in show time. Wuh oh.

What the hell is Angela Petrelli's power? Can she trigger memories? Implant memories? Do something mental? Or was that just the power of mother/son bonding?

Then, holy shit, that was unexpected. I never expected Caitlin to be stranded in the damn future. Because they have to fucking go back for her since she's, like, the only copy of herself. If they change the future before they rescue her, she'll basically cease to exist! Maybe Future Hiro is still kickin' it old school, and he'll bring her back and save everyone the trouble.

Fun times at the Company facility! With special appearance by D.L.! I felt like I was back in Six Feet Under (it's weird; it's not like talking to dead people is a new device unique to SFU, but when it's, like, the defining conceit of the series, it's hard not to have these associations). Of course, when Matt was having that conversation with his dad about how he wasn't going to let him keep him down or whatever, I wished I were back in Six Feet Under because I suddenly noticed why people say Heroes has bad dialogue. I thought about how much better written that scene would be if it were on SFU, where the dialogue always felt real and natural, yet still appropriately poetic at times.

Matt saved Molly with the power of love. Oh, love. WHAT CAN'T YOU DO???

So bizarre to have a scene where Nathan discovers the startling fact that Peter's still alive when we've known for weeks. Like, he was there. I always kind of assumed he knew Peter was alive.

Adam Monroe! Big crazy Magneto man! Kill all humans!

Good fucking Lord, Mohinder. The world is back to normal now that you're a fucking moron. Right or wrong, are you kidding me? You're seriously siding with the Company on this one?

And then, FINALLY, A TOTALLY AWESOME CLIFFHANGER. Now, I knew David Anders was a regular, so I figured he'd have to end up in the present somehow, but I didn't think he was Adam Monroe (and thus the one going around killing people and...HOMG THIS TOTALLY KIND OF ALMOST EXPLAINS THE SYMBOL. IT'S FROM HIS SWORD. GODSEND. THAT'S WHY IT'S ON ALL THE COMPANY MERCHANDISE.). This makes Hiro's plotline have far more of a point. And if Kensei got to the future the slow way (that is, by...waiting), I imagine he's quite fucking insane by now.

Comments:

You didn't think that Monroe was Kensei? Did you not watch the last two episodes (no, sir, you can not blame your time in The Company)? That was obvious mcobvious card. Heck, as soon as they showed Kensei's powers, I knew he'd show up in the future. As soon as they mentioned Adam Monroe, I knew who he was. As soon as he talked about the revenge plan on Hiro, I knew the why.

Kensei got the original group together, knowing full well that Hiro would spring from one of them - and that is why Kaito-San was the first one offed. The rest were just to cover his tracks and bring about Genosha.

So yeah - obvious mcobvious. BUT SO FUCKING BADASS THAT I DONT CARE.

And West still sucks. I want him to be killed by Sylar, Maya, Peter AND Adam Monroe.

Yeah, I kind of love Chuck now. I can't wait until we see why Bryce stole the Intersect. And the preview for next week looked cool. "Hot coffee!"

Regarding Heroes: while I love the places they end up, I don't like how they got there. For some reason, I think the Heroes writers think up awesome situations, but have trouble getting the characters into those situations. Like Hiro's Adventures of Samurailand, where the only actual point was to introduce Kensei so we could recognize him as Adam Monroe. Which could have been done in three episodes, not seven.

I liked the whole scene with Matt, his dad and Molly in the nightmare room, not because it was omg realistic but because it sounded like classic epic comic book dialogue to me.No, it totally did. Heroes isn't trying to be realistic. It's just something that struck me.

Dude, I think I came to the same realization about Chuck with last night's episode too! I think I may love it.

The subtitles on Heroes are really getting on my nerves. I love Hiro, but dude needs to start speaking English if he wants me to pay attention to his storylines (I watch Heroes while doing homework and other stuff, so I listen more than watch). I cannot wait for KB to be back.

I love Chuck. It makes me sad that people don't. How can you not? It's just so fun!! So I'm guessing the Intersect was about to be poached by someone, and destroying it (but saving it in Chuck's apparently super-human brain) was the only way to save it.

Heh, I'm totally borrowing Capt. Awesome's line about Stanford - "It's hard to hate them, because they just suck so bad."

I liked the tv-game contest, and how many shoutouts the writers threw to their former series. Writers, come back!

Heroes was actually, dare I say it, enjoyable this week! I mean, not stupid Claire and West, but you know, the rest. I was so excited to see David Anders back and TOTALLY EVIL and yet still maintaining his British accent, despite having been alive and (presumably) travelling for the last 400 years.

I gave up on PD ages ago, and now that I'm all workywork I'm so glad. Maybe I'll try and watch the Chuck episodes I have on ice, if it's getting better. Talk about formulaic before! Plus, you know, I LOVE BRYCE from the 2 minutes we got of him.

As for [i]Heroes[/i] this was it's last chance before it got iced because of WORK but it was finally good. Well, except I wanted to kill Mohinder even though he's crazy sexy and has a melt-inducing voice. And keep your negative vibes off my Claire, and even West.

PLUS Sark stays in hopefully TIGHTER clothes, with less body stench, and that lovely fake accent!

And then Hiro conveniently reappears now instead of the timepoint he last knew, which would make the most sense. Oh, time travel nonsense.

Yes, that occurred to me as well. I admit until last night I was sort of thinking along the same lines, that Hiro would come back and find out his father was dead, but when it actually happened, I realized it made no sense.

I think we still haven't seen Angela's power demonstrated. I keep hoping to think of some power of Peter's that we haven't identified as coming from anyone in particular, because surely whatever it is, he's got it.

I've read a few comments now saying they totally called it that Kensei would be Adam Monroe, and...I don't get how that was at all obvious. Maybe I am naive in the ways of the televisions.

Dude, good call on the Godsend symbol! It explains just about everything, I think. I mean, not how it appears and disappears from flesh, but still. Whoa.

I don't care if Matt's dialogue sucked- that's kind of par for the course here- he GREW UP. AND GOT OVER HIS DADDY ISSUES. Dear lord, that almost never happens anywhere, let alone on Heroes. And maybe it's the badness of some of the rest of the cast blinding me, but Grunberg was doing some genuinely good acting there, working those lines for all they were worth. And did I mention he GREW and CHANGED?

I have definitely passed over into love with Chuck, although I would've liked yesterday's episode better if even one of the student/spies at the end had looked like they'd ever held a gun before. Well, okay, the chick who saved Chuck was good, but the others did not come of as all that bad-ass.

I'm not sure that I love Chuck more than Pushing Daisies, but I love them in different ways. However, I do believe that I love Chuck more than Reaper, which I was not expecting based on their respective pilots.

Heroes is still my favorite, though. I was even enjoying the ancient Japan stuff, though mostly because Yaeko is pretty. The end of that storyline seemed very anticlimactic, but the "Kensei is still evil and probably still has it out for Hiro centuries later" twist was neat and took me completely by surprise. I wasn't even expecting David Anders in the present (I'd heard that he'd been given a bigger role than originally planned but hadn't thought through what that would mean). I like him, so this makes me happy.

...if my calculations are correct, humanity is due to be wiped out in a couple weeks, in show time. Wuh oh.Thank you for pointing that out! I had gotten mixed up, and thought the virus wasn't suppose to go pandemic until next year, and I was wondering how the hell they were going to drag out the plot for so long. This is much better.

I didn't really like Caitlin, but now I'm rather worried for her. Dystopian futures is not good times.

I would've liked yesterday's episode better if even one of the student/spies at the end had looked like they'd ever held a gun before. Well, okay, the chick who saved Chuck was good, but the others did not come of as all that bad-ass.I thought that was part of the humor, myself. I didn't think they were supposed to be TOTALLY bad-ass because it was really obvious they weren't super comfortable with the guns.

However, I do believe that I love Chuck more than Reaper, which I was not expecting based on their respective pilots.I'm the same way. Watch this space tonight for more info.

I'd heard that he'd been given a bigger role than originally planned but hadn't thought through what that would meanWhich is odd because did they initially only sign him up for Kensei without making him Adam Monroe? Because that doesn't make much sense, given that Kensei being Adam Monroe makes a lot of things fit together, like the Godsend symbol.